


Queer Eye for the Toad Guy

by SpaceVinci



Category: X-Men Evolution
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Animal Transformation, Crack Treated Seriously, Dinosaurs, Enemies to Lovers, First Kiss, Homophobic Language, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Self-Hatred, Set in 2001 with slight liberties taken, Tagging Is Hard And I'll Add More Stuff Later, Todd Deserves Love and Happiness, takes place after s01e07
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:08:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29481216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceVinci/pseuds/SpaceVinci
Summary: A week ago, an incident with the X-Geeks left Todd in... something of a weird place, mentally speaking. And when he meets a strange new girl in Mystique's after-school group, things only get weirder.Or, the one where I force Todd to practice self care and also give him a friend, because I want this boy to be happy while I make him suffer.
Relationships: Toad/Kurt Wagner, Todd Tolanksy & Original Female Character
Comments: 9
Kudos: 12





	Queer Eye for the Toad Guy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Witch meets the Toad, and the truth comes out.

Mostly, Todd notices the new girl because, well, she’s new. Mystique’s “after school group” (read: makeship detention where she makes them all hang out in case she needs to talk to them) isn’t exactly large, and it’s usually just the Brotherhood, but Todd’s sure he’s never seen this girl in the rotating groups of misfits, wallflowers, and burnout jocks that come through expecting a normal detention and ending up with a bunch of confrontational weirdos instead. Not that Todd necessarily likes thinking of himself as a “weirdo,” but, well.

The new girl definitely hasn’t come through before. Todd is pretty sure he’d remember her, unless one of the pretty, popular girls has recently taken a sharp turn into goth territory and he just isn’t recognizing her because of all the makeup (and it’s sort of a lot of makeup, unless she happens to also be a mutant, and her thing is that she doesn’t have pores). The change would have had to be recent, because Todd has a pretty reliable mental list of all the goth girls in school, ranked unofficially by just how much they scare him (which is, incidentally, the exact same order as how hot he thinks they are, but he doesn’t have to admit that to anyone).

New Girl isn’t on the list. She also might be emo, not goth, but Todd can’t ever remember the difference, or if there even is a difference. She’s not too scary looking, either, all hunched in on herself and scribbling in her notebook, and Todd wouldn’t normally pay her much attention past a few jabbing remarks to let her know the lay of the land, but he doesn’t really have that many options lately. After recent events that Todd is really wishing he would figure out how to not think about, the other Brotherhood members have finally gotten tired of mercilessly making fun of him and have instead moved on to ignoring him entirely. So Todd’s options are 1) keep to himself and stay quiet, which he’s not sure he’s actually capable of, 2) let loose all the energy he keeps bottled up at pretty much all times, and then probably get beat up by one of the guys (or by Mystique, if she happens to come back into the room), or 3) try to talk to New Girl, which for some reason no one’s done yet.

He elects to hop up onto the chair next to New Girl.

“Yo.”

New Girl starts violently and lets out a yell, which is probably a fair reaction seeing as Todd did quite literally hop up onto the chair. To her credit, she composes herself quickly. “Uh, hi.”

“Watcha doin’ in that notebook?” he asks. He peers over her shoulder before she has a chance to respond, and sees that her surprised jump has made the pencil cut a jagged line across her drawing of something laid out spread-eagle. New Girl wrinkles her nose briefly at his proximity, which Todd is used to, but doesn’t lean away, which he isn’t as used to.

“It’s a frog,” she tells him. “I’ve been trying to get better at drawing the anatomical model from memory, ‘cause labeling all the organs is easier if I can doodle the drawing without having to lug the textbook around with me, and that helps with memorizing the names, ya know?. I mean, I don’t have to memorize - it’s not for class, or anything. I’m not in biology. Do they do frog dissections in biology here? I haven’t really been here all that - I’m, um, I’m rambling, sorry.” She hunches her shoulders and grins sheepishly. “People usually tell me to shut up by now.”

“People usually tell me to piss off by now,” Todd says, without really meaning to.

New Girl frowns. “Really? We only just started talking.”

Todd just leans back and shrugs. New Girl hesitates for a beat, then reaches out a gloved hand. Todd finds himself thinking of Rogue before he knows why, and then realizes that he can’t see pretty much any of the girl’s skin aside from her face and neck, and even that’s partially covered by a choker. Maybe she is a mutant, after all. Or maybe it’s just a goth thing.

“I’m Gretel,” says New Girl.

Todd, for lack of a better response, accepts the handshake. “Todd. Most people call me Toad, though.”

“Toad,” she repeats, and visibly relaxes. Not the reaction Todd was expecting, but he’ll take it.

“So, uh,” Todd says, rocking back on his heels, “what got you landed here, dawg?”

Gretel slumps. She’s got this way of reacting to things with her whole body that makes Todd feel like he’s staring even when he’s pretty sure he’s maintaining a normal amount of eye contact. Not that he’s the world’s greatest judge of that kind of thing, but the point stands. “I was late to school,” she says, then adds, “like, kind of… every day since I transferred?”

“Seriously?” Todd laughs. It’s the wrong thing to do. Gretel curls in on herself again, and really, Todd has no idea how much you’re technically supposed to look at someone when you’re talking to them, and something about Gretel is making him seriously overthink it. He glances away just in time to catch the tiny smirk that stretches across Pietro’s features before he turns back to where he’s standing with Lance and Fred. Or, rather, Lance is standing, and Freddy is sitting, and Pietro is a flurry of constant motion around them.

He remembers, with a sharp twist in his stomach, that he’s an outcast now, even among the Brotherhood circle of outcasts. He wonders if Gretel talking with him makes her an outcast, too. He wonders if it’s something he should warn her about, if it’s selfish to bask in the attention of someone who doesn’t know his many shortcomings, if he cares if he’s being selfish.

In the second it’s taken him to consider this, Pietro has already zipped across the room and sprawled out on a chair he’s dragged around to face Gretel.

“Hey, not so often we see a new face around here,” he says, and Todd doesn’t even have time to wonder what he’s playing at before he goes on, as rapid-fire as ever. “Can’t believe no one’s tried to talk to you yet.”

Gretel frowns and glances at Todd. She’s trying to catch his eye, Todd realizes belatedly. But the whole reason that this is happening in the first place is the exact reason Todd isn’t going to meet her eyes right now: he’s a coward.

“But he just -” Gretel starts, and Todd cuts her off.

“Yeah, whatever,” he says. Before Gretel or Pietro can say another word, he’s hopped off into a corner and resigned himself to another evening of staying desperately under the radar.

* * *

Kurt hasn’t been in school since the Incident That Todd Tries Not to Think About. Which, damn, was only a week ago. He’s not sure what’s harder to believe: that he misses the guys being outright dicks to him, or that it only took them, like, 3 days to decide to ignore him entirely. Actually, the first part isn’t all that hard to believe, but it would also mean Todd had to admit that he’d do anything for even the smallest amount of attention, and that’s not gonna happen any time soon.

But back to the point at hand, Kurt still isn’t back. And Todd had pretty much been planning on avoiding him anyway, but one side effect of trying to avoid someone is that you keep an eye out for them. So Todd knows that either Kurt is also avoiding him, and doing a competent job of it (likely) or he’s missing (less likely, but still a possibility). Todd doesn’t know what he’s going to do in the event of either option being true, but he’s getting sick of not knowing which it is.

This is why, against his better judgment, he finds himself approaching Jean and Kitty where they’ve stopped in front of the lockers to talk about something. Kitty he knows is close with Kurt, so probably she knows something, and Jean is the nicest out of the whole lot of them, so he’s more likely to get an actual answer. Which makes this tactical instead of stupid, or something.

He gets as far as hopping over and saying, “Uh, hey,” before Kitty interrupts him.

“Ugh,” she says, waving a hand in front of her nose. “Like, what do you want?”

“Just, uh.” He rocks back on his heels. He hadn’t fully processed until now that there isn’t a good way to ask about Kurt (Hey, you know that fuzzy dude I always fight? Who I’ve maybe sort of been having dreams I super don’t have to fess up to about lately? Where is he?) but he’s here now, and he’s gotta say something. “Haven’t seen Kurt around.”

“Why do you, like, care?” Kitty snaps.

Jean rests a placating hand on her shoulder and turns to smile at Todd. He kind of hates some days how much he loves it when she smiles at him, because Jean has this way of smiling like you’re worth something, and it just isn’t fair to train that kind of energy on Todd when all he wants to do is bask in it. “He’s been sick,” she says.

“Probably your, like, fault,” Kitty mutters.

“How the hell is it my fault?” Todd squawks.

Kitty plants her fists on her hips. “‘Cause you got your gross toad germs all over him or whatever!”

“That ain’t my fault, foo’,” Todd protests, but Kitty is already turning around and slamming open her locker. She actually bothered to open it, which is how Todd knows she’s intentionally trying to drown out anything else he might have to say by shoving her books around.

Jean offers Todd another smile, more apologetic this time, and all Todd can think is that she’s going to grow up and be the teacher that everyone accidentally calls ‘Mom’ all the time. Whatever. It’s an empty platitude. He knows when he’s not wanted.

He doesn’t quite make it out of earshot before Jean turns to Kitty and says, softly, “You don’t get salmonella from -” but he makes himself focus on the buzz of the rest of the hallway instead, lets the loud white noise of it wash over him, makes himself stop thinking.

Stop thinking. Yeah, right. Like his thoughts aren’t a mile a minute, 24/7. But hey, a toad can dream.

* * *

“Can toads dream?” he asks Gretel the next day.

She’s in the Afterschool Group again, which is another point in favor of her probably being a mutant, but there isn’t really a good way to ask about that. Not one Todd knows, anyway. And he’s more concerned with trying to figure out why she made a beeline for him the second she got there.

“I have not been able to focus on a single thing all day,” she’d told him, “because I have been thinking of literally nothing but the frog choir from the Harry Potter series, and if I don’t talk about it, I may explode.”

He’d blinked at her, sort of half-processed the slightly manic look in her eyes behind her enormous round glasses, and shrugged. “Shoot, yo.”

Which is how he’d ended up spending the last, what, 15 minutes? Half an hour? The last little while completely failing to keep up with Gretel as she explains what kinds of frogs might conceivably sing, and how many of those are commonly found in England, and if it makes sense to do magic on frogs or import them or something, all of this interspersed with multiple interruptions to discuss something about a school not making any sense, and a bunch of tangential tirades about frogs. Todd has absorbed approximately none of it.

Which is all to say that it’s not entirely out of the blue when he asks her if toads can dream. Not that that means he knows why he asked it, although now that the question is out there he’s curious to know the answer. He’s also aware that it’s sort of a stupid thing to ask someone, but Gretel just tilts her head and considers it.

“Mmm… no,” she says eventually. “No, I - I think they enter the - like, they have a similar phase of the sleep cycle? I think? But they don’t dream.”

“Huh.”

Gretel squeezes her eyes shut. “Oh, jeez, I’ve been prattling on for a while now, haven’t I?”

“Eh,” Todd shrugs again, “s’cool. Trust me, I ain’t got no problem talkin’ if I feel like buttin’ in.” Truth be told, it’s the most conversation he’s had all week, and he couldn’t give two shits that he’s barely contributed to it. Talking to Gretel, even when she’s doing most of the talking, takes the edge off the familiar buzz that’s been growing in his mind all week, threatening to drown out anything and everything until - well. Let’s just say it’s not a place he wants to end up in again. And given how little he’s felt like talking recently, he’s willing to bet it’s not a place that’s as far away as he’d like.

“No, no,” Gretel says, “I gotta get better at not doing that.” She’s pursing her lips, and Todd considers that maybe it’s impossible to know how much to look at her because there’s just so damn much to look at on her face alone. Spots of raised skin run across her cheekbones (Todd’s guess is acne) and probably over the bridge of her nose, too, except she always covers it with a bandaid. So the whole center of her face is kind of a stack of bandaid, nose ring, black lipstick, all going straight down in a line. Plus, her round wireframe glasses are almost comically large, to the point where Todd suspects that her hair would actually get tangled in them if she didn’t keep it pulled into tight braids.

Todd doesn’t even actually register that Gretel is talking again until Lance interrupts her.

“You’re not still trying to get his attention, are you, Conne?” he calls over. Todd’s thoughts are, in order, 1) that at least they’re acknowledging he exists again, 2) that he’s pretty sure he just learned Gretel’s last name, and 3) that there’s no way in hell this ends well.

“Um,” Gretel says.

“Thought we already warned you the guy’s a homo,” Lance continues, and Todd feels the skin on the back of his neck prickle.

“I - I don’t care,” Gretel says softly, like it’s an admission of something, but Todd is suddenly too angry to even consider unpacking that.

“Take that back!” he yells, launching himself at Lance. He actually manages to get a good hit in before Lance retaliates, probably because Lance didn’t expect him to stand up for himself. And really, he probably shouldn’t have. Tiny as he is, he’s got the dexterity and wiry frame to hold his own in a fight, but there’s not much he can do when the odds are three against one. He manages to avoid getting grabbed by Freddy once, gets him with the tongue the next time, but gets firmly grappled after he trips over what he assumes is Pietro.

“I’m not a fucking homo!” he screeches, struggling desperately against Freddy’s grip. And against the knowledge that he’s lying.

Freddy isn’t holding him tight enough to bruise. After everything, it’s that little bit of what could either be kindness or pity that almost breaks him. He wants to run, or curl up in a ball and die, or fight and claw and spit his way out of this until they’re all sorry they thought they could treat him like shit.

He’s not sure what he’s about to do (nothing good, that’s for sure) and he never gets the chance to find out. From behind Freddy, he hears a small voice gasp.

“You…” Gretel’s voice sounds strangled, disbelieving. “You’re a mutant.”

“Nice going Tolansky,” Pietro growls.

Gretel either doesn’t hear him or doesn’t care. She’s tugging off her gloves as she scurries into the middle of what was a brawl mere seconds ago, pushing up her sleeves, and the skin beneath is green. Solidly, unmistakably green.

“You’re like me,” Gretel says.

It’s Pietro who breaks the second of shocked silence that follows.

“Well, well, well,” he says. Todd can hear the smirk without even looking. “‘Bout time we had another girl in the Brotherhood.”

* * *

Kurt is back in school by Monday, which means Todd can finally enact his plan of avoiding him like his life depends on it.

The excitement around trying to recruit Gretel had occupied the rest of the guys most of the way through the weekend, so Todd had been able to sleep in peace for about 30 (non-consecutive) hours, but he’s still on edge. Which is why, when Kurt comes up behind him while Todd is trying to inconspicuously hide in the shadows near the lockers, Todd nearly jumps out of his skin.

It’s a good thing no one is around, so no one but Kurt hears Todd scream like a little girl.

“What?” he demands. Maybe if he tries hard enough to pretend it isn’t happening, Kurt won’t notice how his voice rockets about an octave about its usual pitch.

“You tell me vhat,” Kurt shoots back. “I know you’re up to something.”

Todd isn’t, as far as he is aware, ‘up to’ anything that Kurt would probably care about, and he must look as confused as he feels, because Kurt rolls his eyes and continues.

“You’ve been following me all day,” he accuses, which, well. Todd’s plan to avoid Kurt had hinged on knowing where Kurt was at all times, which might have sort of resulted in following him just to make sure he wasn’t seen. And it might just turn out that Todd is pretty bad at not being seen.

“Have not,” Todd says, instead of explaining any of this.

“And Kitty told me you vere asking about me,” Kurt continues. He’s pushed his way into Todd’s space to shove a finger into his chest, and Todd is clutched with the sudden irrational thought that he could just kiss Kurt. He’s not that much shorter, he could just get up on his tip-toes and - yeah, and probably get the snot beaten out of him.

(Might be worth it.)

“Yeah, well, maybe I thought _you_ were up to something, huh?” Todd counters, unconvincingly. “Hadn’t seen you around.”

“I vhas sick.”

“And how was I supposed to know that, dawg?”

“You vere probably the vun who got me sick!”

“Ain’t my fault, yo!” Todd swats Kurt’s hand away before he can do anything stupid and impulsive, leaps back to stick himself against the side of the lockers. “ _You_ kissed _me_.”

“It vhasn’t a kiss!” Kurt yells. They both tense as his voice echoes across the empty hallway. Todd wonders absently what class Kurt is skipping to have this confrontation. “It vhas not a kiss,” he repeats, quiet but forceful.

“So show me what a real kiss is, yo.” Todd manages to plaster on a shit-eating grin just in time for it to look like teasing, just in time for Kurt not to notice that it’s an actual request, that it popped out of his mouth before he could stop himself from saying it.

Kurt just growls and stalks away. It’s probably the best way this could have ended. Doesn’t stop it from hurting, though. Watching Kurt stalk away without doing anything - hell, hitting him would have been preferable - sure, that’s not great, but Todd can’t deny that his last words are twisting around in his gut something awful.

It wasn’t a kiss. Yeah, fine, okay, it wasn’t a kiss. Not really. It was Kurt shoving his mouth against Todd’s, and intellectually, Todd knows this, but it doesn’t stop him from thinking of it as a kiss.

The whole situation really started about two weeks ago, when Mystique had shown up at the Brotherhood clubhouse telling them they were gonna be fighting the X-geeks (Todd’s choice of words, not hers). She didn’t say why, and none of them had asked too much about it. And when the fight rolled around, it had gone pretty much as expected, each of them facing off against one or a few of the X-geeks just like they always did. Todd and Kurt tackling each other like they were born to do it. It always did seem to come down to either Nightcrawler or Spyke when Todd got fighting.

Todd had actually been doing pretty well that day, had been holding his own just fine, probably could have taken on more than just Kurt if the guy hadn’t gotten the bright idea to try and hold all of Todd’s limbs down at once. Which wasn’t such a bad idea, since with Todd’s mutation, if his legs are free he’s still a threat.

But then someone (Scott? Kitty? Todd can’t remember, stuff gets kind of hazy around that point) had called out to remind Kurt that Todd’s tongue was pretty much a limb in its own right, and Kurt was already using all his available limbs to pin Todd down (and don’t think that wasn’t a position that was gonna live in Todd’s head forever, whether he liked it or not). So before Todd had a chance to lash out with said tongue, Kurt’s mouth was shoved against his, pressed so tight Todd could feel the outline of his fangs pressed against the skin.

It hadn’t worked, exactly. Todd had frozen in shock for a second, but then an adrenaline rush of panic had coursed through his entire body, and he’d launched Kurt off him hard enough to throw him through a wall, if a wall had been handy, and maybe he could have gotten the upper hand in the fight then, maybe he could have pushed past the sense memory of fur against his lips and a tail twitching against his leg, and maybe then everything would have been fine.

But of course, that’s not what happened. Of course not. Todd had wanted to do so many things in that moment, had wanted to launch himself at Fuzzy and kiss him senseless, _really_ kiss him, or to beat the ever living shit out of him, or to explode, just spontaneously combust right then, right there. But he hadn’t done any of those things. Instead, he -

* * *

“- ran away like a little pussy,” Lance finishes.

This was an inevitability, but it doesn’t mean Todd wants to curl up and die any less. They haven’t even really figured out what Gretel’s powers are, yet, since she doesn’t seem to want to talk about it, but they’re all trying to get her to join the Brotherhood before the X-geeks can get their hands on her. So of course, eventually she was gonna ask what had happened to get them all to be such assholes to one of their members.

Lance is probably the best at telling stories out of all of them (Pietro talks too fast, Freddy gets impatient trying to get to the point, and Todd can’t tell it in order to save his life) but he’s also not exactly the most charitable narrator.

“I panicked, okay?” Todd grumbles from his sulking spot on the ceiling. “So sue me.”

“So… you guys are mad about the running away bit?” Gretel asks.

“Well yeah,” Pietro says, “obviously.”

This shouldn’t surprise Todd. He knew that at least part of the reasoning for his recent shunning was the fact that he’d flaked out on the fight. But there’s also been a part of him that just assumed they all knew he hadn’t exactly hated having Kurt - okay, fine, maybe not _kissing_ him, but… pressed up against him like that? God, that sounds even worse. The point is, some part of him had just assumed that that was the real reason no one would talk to him, that it was because however much he might not want to admit it, he wants to kiss Kurt again (never fucking mind that he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell), and Kurt is an X-geek, and also some kind of weird fuzzy alien, and also, yeah, a guy.

In retrospect, it maybe makes sense that they hadn’t just read his mind and pinned him for a queer.

“So,” Gretel says slowly, “you… aren’t talking to him because, um. Like, as punishment?”

Todd congratulates himself on resisting the urge to put his head between his knees and wait for death to take him.

“Uh, yeah, pretty much,” Freddy says.

“Okay,” Gretel says. “Okay, okay. So. What if… there was some way he could, like, make up for it? Like, something he could do as, um, punishment, or whatever. And then we could call it a clean slate?”

Todd narrows his eyes. “Yo, where is this going?”

“Well, I just -” Gretel cuts herself off and takes a deep breath. “I… never told you guys about my, um. My powers.”

That gets everyone’s attention. On some level, yeah, recruiting Gretel is a matter of principle to stick it to the X-geeks, especially with the loss of Rogue still such a stinging and recent blow. But it would still be nice to know what she can do and how she could add to the team.

“I can, um.” Gretel speaks haltingly, like she’s not used to having to explain this. Probably she isn’t. “I can turn people into, like… amphibians? Frogs and toads and stuff.” Here she straightens up, apparently channeling all of the confidence she’s got to spare into proposing her plan. “Let me turn Todd into a toad - a real, actual toad - for a week. Think of it like - like a way for me to practice my powers. Or like hazing or something.”

“Excuse me?” Todd squeaks.

Pietro waves a hand at him, dismissive. “What’s your vested interest in this, huh?”

Lance just chuckles. “I think someone’s got a little crush.” He says it kind of meanly, but really, everything Lance says sounds kind of mean. It’s just something about his voice, Todd thinks. Or maybe he’s just a certified colossal jerk a good 50% of the time, who’s to say.

Gretel sputters. “That’s not - look, I - I told you, it’s practice. And from what I’ve seen of his powers already I’m pretty sure he’s partially amphibious to begin with. I have some… hypotheses.”

Todd doesn’t like the glint in her eye when she says that. It’s not that he minds a little bit of mad science every now and then, it’s that he doesn’t much like the idea of being the subject. Unbidden, his memory conjures up images of the dissected frog in Gretel’s notebook that first day, lying spread-eagle and cut through with a jagged pencil mark. He shudders.

“Yo, don’t I get a say in this?” he protests.

He thinks Gretel says something like, “Oh, for sure,” but it’s drowned out by the chorus of “No”s he gets from the guys.

“Alright, Conne,” Lance says at last. He jerks a beckoning hand toward Todd without looking. “Show us what you got.”

Gretel flashes a sort of wincing smile. “I’d rather not do it, like, right now? I was gonna bring him home first. The transformation - his, um, his clothes don’t really - look, it’ll just be all around less awkward if I have a few things set up first, okay?”

Todd doesn’t get much from this disjointed explanation, but from the way Pietro starts snickering, he can’t imagine it’s anything good. Lance is still standing there, arms crossed, regarding Gretel.

Gretel clears her throat and makes another effort to stand up straight. “So, yeah. That’s - that’s my idea.”

Lance keeps standing there for another second before he finally breaks out into a grin and sticks out his hand for a shake. “You’ve got yourself a deal, Conne.”

Todd is pretty sure the wink Gretel throws him as she shakes Lance’s hand is supposed to be subtle. It’s not. He also has no idea what it’s supposed to mean.

All he knows is that things are starting to look weirder and weirder for the Toad.

* * *

In his dreams, it’s intentional.

In his dreams, Kurt straddles him like it’s a coordinated dance, and not the squirming battle of elbows and knees it was in real life. The battle around them fades to background noise, then to nothing, and nothing at all matters but the way Todd can feel Kurt’s every breath against his own chest. And when Kurt leans down to press their lips together, it could never be mistaken for anything but a kiss.

Sometimes everything happens just as it did, but Todd springs back toward Kurt, drags him in to show him what a real kiss is, what the tongue can _really_ do, and it’s all the adrenaline rush he gets out of a good fight and more, and _better_.

(On the nights his fantasies are less charitable, he dreams that he kisses Kurt until the greenness of his tongue starts to spread, until he sees it seep like sickness over Kurt’s face. And the other Brotherhood boys tell him he’s won, he’s defeated the enemy, and Todd can’t feel anything at all.)

He wakes up curled around his pillow, and it’s never as warm as the Kurt that lives in his dreams. But the pillow doesn’t protest when he buries his face in it and screams, wordless, because he doesn’t even begin to have the words to wonder how long he’s been hopelessly crushing on Kurt without even noticing, or how long it will take before it finally kills him.

If there’s one thing he likes about Gretel’s plan, it’s that toads don’t dream.


End file.
